Study: Romney Fact-Checked for Falsehoods at Double the Rate of Obama

September 24, 2012

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A tabulation of recent rulings from PolitiFact, a prominent but increasingly controversial website devoted to fact-checking candidates’ claims, found that “statements by Mitt Romney and other Republicans” were rated false “twice as often as statements by President Obama and other Democrats.” That’s a lot more false statements by Republicans, which makes it harder to cling to the false equivalency that “both sides do it.”

A snap poll of conservative reactions shows that the study of Politifact, from George Mason’s Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), proves the conservative theory that the fact-checkers are out to get Republicans.

“This discrepancy is not because the Romney campaign is egregiously truth-challenged,” explainsThe Weekly Standard, “but because the ‘fact checking’ enterprise is more often than not partisan.” When you’re done attacking the messenger, go for the refs! That approach may be welcomed by CMPA, however, which has played up its past studies as proof that life is hard for the GOP. (Press release headlines include “GOP Candidates Were Big Joke to TV Comics in 2011,” “TV News Coverage Helped Sink Santorum…”, and, for good measure, “Arab Media Boost Obama.” Oh that Arab Media—it just loves American presidents.)

In the end, it’s true that your view of the findings depends on your view of Politifact, though, because if you think they generally get it right, then cumulative data like this is still bad for the right:

A majority of the Obama campaign’s statements (55%) were rated as true or mostly true, compared to one out of four statements (26%) by the Romney campaign.

All the sparring over Politifact’s findings and methodology suggests that plenty of political experts think the site matters. From this study to The Weekly Standard to Rachel Maddow, Politifact is scrutinized because people believe a website devoted to fact-checking can impact how the campaign is scored. Add in social media, which has turned fact-checking into a viral race, and these sites can have an outsized impact. As a recent essay argued on Daily Kos, a liberal site that has long been critical of campaign media coverage, this year’s coverage is improving because of the interplay of fact-checking and the web:

While those Gang of 500 media guys could ignore the blogs all day long, they all play on Twitter and Facebook. And it’s hard to ignore the criticism you get there not just from the grassroots, but from their peers in the industry…[and while] fact checkers…are consistently stupid, particularly when searching for “balance” in their targets…they have provided other media guidance on how to cover campaign claims. So Romney can go around claiming all he wants that Obama went on a world apology tour and tried to end welfare reform; the fact that it’s patently false means that no one will cover that nonsense, or if they do, they’ll include a line about it not being true. Indeed, the Romney campaign has been so flustered by the media fact checkers that they famously proclaimed that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

And the Romney campaign is entitled to that view. To paraphrase Gore Vidal, though, it doesn’t matter what he thinks of the facts—what matters is what the facts think of him.

Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com.
Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent.
He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign.
As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.